The music world was caught completely off guard over the weekend by the release of English producer/singer Jai Paul‘s alleged debut album. Although the timing (Saturday evening) and method of distribution (via a new Bancamp page) seemed like a very odd approach considering his ties to XL Recordings and the immensely high level of anticipation surrounding the debut, it also felt like a very Jai Paul thing to do given his past sporadic and unconventional release tactics.

Naturally fans and critics were speculative about the authenticity of the album. As a number of music outlets began to point out yesterday, including Crack In The Road, the site that originally uncovered the Bandcamp page, the varying digital bit rates and fluctuation of volume from song-to-song strongly hinted at it either being a mixtape or leak rather than a legit, fully mastered product.

We’re now learning more about this confusing situation this morning as Consequence of Sound reports that according to Owen Meyers with Dazed Digital, the release in question was apparently illegally released via Paul’s stolen laptop. To further corroborate the report Jai Paul took to Twitter to release the statement below. It should be noted that this is the first tweet from the account and the Bandcamp page that released the leak has now been removed although embedded players still allow for streaming at the time of this report.

As always we’ll continue to watch this story and update as official statements from the key players become available.